This week St. James bible study class dove headlong into the Gospel of Mark. We began with what is also the gospel reading for worship today; the opening lines of the first chapter.
To understand a gospel it is essential to have a firm grasp on its overarching theme. For instance, Luke begins… it seemed good to me… to write you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that [you might have deeper knowledge] of those things in which you were instructed….. Luke seeks to call us into deeper relationship by way of deeper knowledge of the divine made known in Jesus.
Matthew’s theme is the radical reorientation of our lives toward the spiritual realm of the kingdom and the gospel spares no effort in leading us to a fuller understanding…. The kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, a mustard seed, treasure hidden in a field, a merchant seeking beautiful pearls…
John is complex and mystical, it calls us to see beyond the physical manifestation of signs, that is, the miracles Jesus performed, to focus on the truth to which the signs point… that the revealing of divine nature serves to transform us… In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….
Mark, from the outset calls us to repent and return to God in preparation for what is coming. The Gospel opens with the call of the prophet, John, proclaiming the prophecy of Isaiah: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…. Prophecy upon prophecy… and the purpose of prophecy is the call to return to the divine.
Mark is calling his listeners into action, with urgency, to elicit within them, within us, a change of heart. The evangelist calls us to prepare by way of returning in confident expectation, with the sure and certain knowledge of Jesus’s return. This is the theme of Mark: confess, return, anticipate.
Having taken this plunge into Mark I have been intentionally looking for opportunities for self-examination, confession and reorientation; to find an opening to hear and see divine action, not only in my life, but to see it in the world.
It didn't take long before I stumbled upon a six-part podcast entitled, “How can we see?” It features two of my favorite theologians: Richard Rohr and Brian McLauren. Rohr is an author, teacher and priest of the Franciscan order whose name is synonymous with post-modern Christianity. Brian McLauren is a pastor, author and teacher, self-described as a former evangelical fundamentalist; his name is synonymous with the emergent church movement. Also included is a third voice, a feminine voice, and therefore a necessary voice: Jacqui Lewis, pastor of the oldest Presbyterian church in the country, adds depth, care, and a spectrum of colorful images to this probing and challenging conversation.
This podcast relates directly to the actions of confession and returning through the identification and acknowledgement of our personal biases. These biases, many completely unknown to us, create enormous blind spots in our understanding of ourselves, our neighbors and our world. Our blind spots are the missing bits within the mythological stories we have created about ourselves. The substantive parts of our personal mythologies are made up of our experiences, memories and the influential people in our lives. Unconsciously and daily we protect the story we label: My life. Our ego is continuously on the defensive ensuring that we move through “our life” undisturbed and unthreatened. This creates a limited and well-protected worldview that does not reflect the totality of the diversity of human life nor the totality of the depth and breathe of human experience. And we are generally unaware of this. We don’t know what we don’t know.
In the podcast Richard Rohr recites a Latin phrase which creates the foundation for McLauren’s list of biases. The phrase is this: “Whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.” What does this mean? Well, it means that what we perceive and understand about our world is completely dependent on how our experiences and individual influences have shaped our worldview. Jacqui Lewis remarked reflectively, “We are not looking for the story that will change our lives, we are looking for the story that confirms our lives.”
I have heard that when the white men came to the shores of the indigenous peoples they could not see their boats moored several hundred yards offshore because they did not have a framework of history or understanding to interpret what was actually visible. It was not until the medicine men “read” the strange pattern of waves that were breaking on the shoreline and confirmed that something new and never before seen was breaking into their reality that the ships became visible.
McLauren listed the following as biases common to most all of us. You can listen to the podcast I forwarded to you yesterday to hear McLauren explain each of these in detail. In this moment I just want you to get a sense of them. They include: confirmation bias, complexity bias, community bias, complimentary bias, contact bias, conservative/liberal bias, consciousness bias, competency bias, confidence bais, comfort/complacency/convenience bias, catastrophe bias and cash bias.
It is important for us is to realize it that our personal reality is shaped largely by our biases. These biases determine who we associate with, the church we attend or don’t attend, the God we envision, the work we do, the people we vote for, the family we get along with and the family we avoid, the friends we hang out with and the people who are invisible to us, the causes we support, the ideologies we reject, the music we like and the books we read, and on and on. Some biases can be helpful and protect us; they can help us make good decisions about our well-being. But many cause great suffering. Consider the story of parents who rejected their queer child when he came out. Unable to bear the judgment and rejection of his family he committed suicide. There are a number of biases at play here. All of them cause suffering.
Biases call us away from a loving and unbiased God. It is helpful to know our biases, to understand how they work in our lives because to do so helps us to a develop a willful vulnerability and a more open heart.
When I heard McLauren’s list of biases I recognized each of them operating in my life, creating a kind of blindness. Jesus said, you have eyes and yet you cannot see. To have our biases revealed to us, to confess to having them – knowingly or unknowingly, and to do so without judgment is to grow into Christ consciousness. The growing is the returning to the divine. Confession, returning and anticipating – this is the hope of Mark’s gospel. This is the deep desire of God – that we might see the kingdom in its fullness, where it exists here and now, our blinders laid aside, and live joyfully within it.
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